Pricewatch »

• Our banks are broken on almost every level

  February 17, 2012 @ 10:06 am | by Conor Pope

  I was contacted recently by a reader who had a story which, I think, reflects the rotten state of the Irish personal banking sector. She has been with National Irish Bank for 20 years, has never had an unauthorised overdraft, defaulted on a loan, run up a massive credit card debt or behaved in any kind of financially reckless fashion. All her wages go directly into this account every month and have done since the early 1990s.

  She is, in short, a very good customer.
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• Sky high saving…

  February 16, 2012 @ 5:47 pm | by Conor Pope

  I was contacted a couple of hours ago by a SKY customer who wants to get rid of her eircom landline but is afraid that if she does she will lose her TV signal. I actually thought she might be right but Twitter tells me no. While you do need a phone line for Sky multi-room, you don’t if you just want a single box. Not having a landline means she won’t be able to access some of the interactive features on Sky but everything else should work as normal. Given that she is paying 40 quid a month for a telephone service she never uses and is in her mid-20s, by the time she hits 80, she will have saved herself more than €25,000 by simply cancelling the landline.

• Is Greyhound the worst service provider in Ireland?

  @ 11:06 am | by Conor Pope

  Several weeks ago Greyhound came uninvited into my life. The relationship, so far, has not been problem free.
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• Where has all the old money gone?

  February 10, 2012 @ 1:34 pm | by Conor Pope

  Irish consumers who are strapped for cash might want to look behind sofas and rifle through the pockets of little-worn suits in search of some of the €361m worth of punts that were never exchanged for euro after the old currency ceased to be legal tender a decade ago.
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